Labels are frequently attached to items for a variety of reasons. In the most general sense, labels can be attached to an item in order to provide some variety of information about the item to which the label is attached. For example, this information may be source-identifying of either the manufacturer of the item or may provide unique information about the item itself (for example, provide a unique identifier for tracking, quality control, or other purpose).
In many instances, the source-identifying information or the unique information about the label is used to authenticate the item to which the label is affixed. For example, an item of electronics may be confirmed as genuine or authentic by the label. Further, such labels can serve important inventorying or product-tracking purposes. For example, by uniquely identifying a product to which a label is affixed that product may be identified for purposes of confirming if it was produced with a group of those items that was later determined to be defective for purposes of recalls or warranty replacement. The label itself may convey or contain this information or the label may be read in conjunction with some variety of ancillary database to provide the corresponding information of interest (e.g., a serial number may be contained in or on the label which is referenced against a database to determine the information of interest).
Regardless of the reason for having the label and regardless of the information that the label communicates, it is in many cases important that such labels have authenticating, secure, or tamper-proof features. Such security features have been fabricated in a number of different ways. In many cases, labels are designed to have structures which are extremely difficult to reproduce or reverse engineer under the belief that, if it is overly expensive or technologically difficult to counterfeit a label, then the likelihood that someone will try to duplicate the label or otherwise compromise the security of the label will be reduced. Still further, some labels are designed to be tamper-resistant such that, if the label is removed from the item to which the label is affixed with the intent of placing the label on another item, then the label itself is designed to, at least in part, be destroyed in the removal process.